Speaking in a foreign language is considered challenging to both teach and learn. Virtual humans (VHs), as conversational agents (CAs), provide opportunities to practise speaking skills. Lower secondary school students (N = 25) engaged in an AI-based spoken dialogue system (SDS) and interacted verbally with VHs in simulated everyday-life scenarios…

Argumentation is an important component of scientific education (Osborne, 2010). However, how students create and evaluate competing arguments in scientific investigations is a complex construct, which presents significant challenges for assessment. We engaged 349 middle and high school students in a virtual scientific investigation based on an…

This paper examined the effects of online English-medium instruction (EMI) on high school students' performing English face threatening speech acts, by assessing indirect expressions and token agreement (agreement plus but). Participants completed an English placement test and English pretest and posttest through a Google survey. English…

Research on non-cognitive factors has shown that persistence in the face of challenges plays an important role in learning. However, recent work on wheel-spinning, a type of unproductive persistence where students spend too much time struggling without achieving mastery of skills, show that not all persistence is uniformly beneficial for learning.…

Ubiquitous Computing, Mobile Computing and the Internet of Things (collectively referred to as UMI herein) involve recent advances in technology areas such as low-cost and miniaturized processing and sensing technologies, high-bandwidth wireless networking and so on. UMI technologies can also support the recent attempts to reform computing…

This paper describes the design of a mathematical microworld to tackle the persistent difficulties that secondary school students have with the idea of algebraic generalization, which is a key stumbling block in secondary-school mathematics classrooms. Our focus is to characterize algebraic ways of thinking and to design both affordances of the…

This study examined the effects of culturally relevant/responsive, computer-based social skills instruction on the social skill acquisition and generalization of 6 urban African American sixth graders with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). A multiple-probe across participants design was used to evaluate the effects of the social skills…

Digital technology is able to modify deep-rooted views (Martin & Vallance, 2008) and facilitate identity articulation (Bers, 2001). During adolescence young people are developing their personal identity framed through the context of family, friends and cultural and religious inheritance. The complex dynamics between…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of TI-Nspire graphing calculator use on student achievement and on teacher behavior variables of planning, teaching, and assessing. This study investigated the teaching of functions by teachers using the TI-Nspire graphing calculator versus teachers using a non-graphing scientific calculator. …

The U.S. Departments of Commerce and Education (who co-chair the NSTC Working Group) and NetDay formed a partnership aimed at analyzing K-12 student views about technology for learning. These views are analyzed in this second report, "Visions 2020.2: Student Views on Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies." In…